The Asahi Shimbun has rejected carrying an advertisement by Shukan Bunshun because the ad includes a feature story criticizing the leading daily, the major weekly magazine said Wednesday.
The weekly said on its website that Bungeishunju Ltd., its publisher, has sent a letter protesting the rejection to The Asahi Shimbun Co., the newspaper's publisher, after the Asahi refused to run an ad for the Sept. 4 issue scheduled to hit newsstands Thursday.
The Asahi rejected the advertisement because it plugged an article titled, "Why criticize Japan? The Asahi Shimbun — DNA of traitor," which criticizes the Asahi's recently retracted assertion about Japan's wartime sex slavery, the weekly said.
"It is an unpermissible act for an organization with public responsibility to deny an opportunity for newspaper readers to learn about all the other articles (included in the advertisement), not just the article in question," the letter of protest posted on the Bungei Shunju website said.
The Asahi Shimbun Co. has countered the assertion by issuing a statement saying, “The advertisement in question significantly deviates from the scope of criticism and debases our reputation, and we decided we could not run it as it runs counter to our standards for advertisement.”